Officials: Valley water clean enough for humans - but not fish
Rebecca Kimitch
Pasadena Star-News
12/26/2009
SAN GABRIEL VALLEY - A $100 million plan to clean up groundwater contaminated by the aerospace industry faces setbacks as officials struggle to contain remnants of toxic waste.
The plan was to clean water contaminated with perchlorates and other chemicals and discharge it into the San Gabriel River. But, while federal and state laws say the water is good enough for drinking, it's not safe for fish.
"Although they meet drinking water standards, they don't meet water quality standards," said Ray Chavira, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency. "It affects fresh water fish and microorganisms and their ability to reproduce. It doesn't affect humans."
So now, officials are scrambling to come up with a place to send the clean water.
"We need to contain this plume before it reaches drinking water wells," Chavira said. "So we have to worry about time."
The problem is that there's already $5 million worth of pipes and wells in place, ready to pump contaminated water into a treatment facility that would send it to the river, officials said.
A possible solution is taking the newly cleaned water and using it to recharge the aquifer beneath the San Gabriel Valley. Another solution is simply recycling it.
Representatives of San Gabriel Valley cities, water districts and officials from the EPA plan to meet Jan. 7 to discuss a variety of proposals.
Though the project will clean up some 4 million gallons of water a day, finding a use for it is complicated. To be used as drinking water, health officials require it to be blended with water that was never contaminated. Other solutions could require different pipes to be laid, additional treatments, and large fees from various water agencies.
Whatever the option, it will add millions of dollars to the cleanup's price tag, already estimated to cost $100 million over the 30 years it is expected it will take to clean up the contamination.
The companies responsible for the contamination - today part of Northrop Grumman and United Technologies Corporation - will be responsible for the added cost, according to the EPA.
"Are they going to challenge it? They would always like to minimize their cost. They could challenge it, and we would hear them out," Chavira said. "But ... they are the ones responsible for this contamination."
Northrop Grumman spokesman Gus Gulmert said the company is working with the EPA to find a "reasonable solution to this new problem."
"The company remains committed to solving this problem as quickly as possible and getting the remedy back on track," he said.
Finding a solution quickly is key, Chavira said.
The contamination plume is growing by about 300 feet a year. Already some drinking water wells have been shut down.
For La Puente resident Patricia De Anda, who proudly trusts the water from her faucet, they can't move fast enough.
"It's about time. How long has it been contaminated? Decades," she said.
The EPA and the responsible parties thought they had their fix - about a quarter of the treated water would be blended with other water and used for drinking, the rest of it would be flushed down the river into the ocean.
"Until this summer, everyone thought it was all good. Then, all of a sudden, it was `no, you can't do this,"' said Dan Colby, project resource manager for the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority.
But county officials discovered that the treated water would exceed the EPA's own allowed levels for selenium - a naturally occurring chemical element in the aquifer - for discharge into the river.
"The quality requirements for storm water and for drinking water don't match up," said Mark Pestrella, deputy director of he Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.
"Once we discovered there was a conflict, we pushed very hard to get EPA together, to resolve this conflict," Pestrella said.
Other projects throughout the county could face similar fates.
The county's heightened concern is in part due to a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Baykeeper over pollutants it discharges into the ocean. They have been in litigation for the past year and a half.
Even if it is an upstream user that is putting the questionable water into the county's water system, the county can still be held liable, Pestrella explained.
